War? Blair has a bigger battle ahead

Simon Heffer

Last updated at 00:00 12 April 2003

THIS week's events in Baghdad represent Tony Blair's greatest achievement. He took a gamble on something he believed to be right, and did so in the teeth of opposition from his own party and from the British public.

His gamble paid off, and he has every cause for pride.

There are, however, two problems. First, those who argued that he should not support the Americans in this war will never forgive him for having proved them wrong.

It is nauseating to think there might have been people who watched the scenes of jubilant, liberated Iraqis this week with dismay, but there probably were.

Secondly, Mr Blair will run the risk of hubris in his triumph. Desperate to mend fences with Europe, he may now seek to make the expensive and futile gesture of taking sterling into the single currency.

Unlike the war, Mr Blair could only proceed into the euro after the referendum he has promised. He really will have suffered a swollen head if he believes he can win that.

The public might think he is a credible war leader, but the war has also taught them that our main European partners are unreliable and amoral. Most Britons will take some convincing that we should hitch ourselves to that wagon.

The Labour party is now lining up sticks with which they can beat Blair.

The Chancellor's suggestion of regionally-adjusted pay in the public services has already inflamed the trade unions, which are threatening strike action on the issue.

This is indicative of the belligerence, defiance and lack of restraint with which the Labour movement will now conduct its internal debates.

BLAIR's party is so angry at the prospect of foundation hospitals that the legislation designed to effect them has been stalled. There is discontent over various Private Finance Initiative projects, with Labour's Left flexing its muscles to oppose any collaboration with the private sector in the public services.

There will also be much more trouble yet over university tuition fees.

Similarly, any attempts to tighten up asylum law will be jumped on by the Left. Everything is in place to drive Labour back towards the sort of politics that kept it out of office for 18 years.

Though he now basks in his great success, Mr Blair could be undone by these domestic issues far more quickly than many people might imagine.

Gordon Brown may no longer look like an obvious leadership rival, but Robin Cook - however improbable this might seem to those outside the party - certainly does.

Labour's mechanism for removing a leader is even more cumbersome than the Tories'. It would be very hard to remove Mr Blair unless he chose to remove himself.

But his embittered critics on the backbenches, furious that he seems to have sold out to American conservatives, may make life so unpleasant that he's tempted to do just that.

After all, Mr Blair now has his place in history. Yet however much his potential successors might now preen themselves with the thought of continuing his success, they would find all too quickly that he was a very hard act to follow.

s.heffer@dailymail.co.uk

Don't bow to the IRA now

IT'S no surprise that the IRA should have derailed the Northern Ireland peace talks. They don't want to disband and surrender their arsenal, because they will need their organisation and their weaponry to carry on their lucrative drug-running business. Nor will they ever accept British rule in Ulster.

Sadly for the IRA, their American paymasters became disillusioned with the organisation after September 11 brought home to the United States the wickedness of terrorism.

The IRA now have nowhere to go, no international sympathy and little cash at their disposal - so giving them any further concessions in order to revive the so-called 'peace process' is simply absurd.

DON'T believe a word of the 'promises' coming out of the Home Office that unsuccessful Iraqi asylum seekers will now be sent back. The Government has a long record of promising deportations and then failing to deliver. Home Secretary David Blunkett and his people say such things to try to improve public morale about our scandalous immigration system, and then hope we will forget about it. We don't, but I'm afraid they do.

THE same people who opposed the war in Iraq, who warned of the bloodbath that would inevitably ensue, and who have now been proved humiliatingly wrong, have manufactured another gripe. They rail against the Americans for 'allowing' looting in Baghdad and elsewhere.

In all previous wars there has been a traditional remedy for looting, which is to shoot the looters on sight.

Are the same militant Leftists who warned Messrs Bush and Blair not to kill a single civilian now going to insist that coalition troops slaughter them in large quantities?

I HOPE that if Saddam Hussein or any of his vile henchmen whose pictures appeared in yesterday's Mail are found by British forces, they will be shot on sight.

If they are left in the jurisdiction of this country, they will end up being tried by Lord Woolf or one of his bleeding-heart cronies. And within three or four years they will be running kebab shops in west London, having been granted asylum and helped by state benefits.

If the Americans catch them, they will at least face the death penalty they so richly deserve.

WE'RE THE MUGS

MUGGERS should no longer be sent to jail automatically, according to a Government sentencing advisory group. It is not much longer than 50 years ago that those convicted of robbery with violence were given the cat o'nine tails. Now, instead, they will suffer by being made to help old ladies with their shopping.

No wonder there's an epidemic of street crime in this country. It will not abate until we realise that muggers don't understand the language of sweet reason. Crimes against the person are extremely serious; a community sentence is neither a deterrent nor an appropriate sanction.

IT WAS scandalous that those convicted in the Millionaire trial were not sent to prison. What they did was no different from conspiring to rob any business of Pounds 1million. The judge said he did not wish to separate the children of two of the crooks, Charles and Diana Ingram, from their parents. But the Ingrams should have considered the possible consequences of their crime before committing it. The apparent message was that white-collar crime is not a crime at all, and that class justice rules. If we get to the stage where it seems as though being middle-class wins you special exemptions, the rule of law will break down.